


The World Is Too Much With Us

by Nyssa23



Category: Firefly
Genre: Christian Character of Color, Christianity, Flashback, Gen, Religions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-16
Updated: 2010-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyssa23/pseuds/Nyssa23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into Shepherd Book's past unsettles even him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Is Too Much With Us

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Safe."
> 
> Written for LJ comm choc_fic; prompt: "Firefly/Serenity, Shepherd Book: secret identity - The past is not dead. It is not even past."

It was a feeling the Shepherd Book had felt before, one he hadn't reckoned on feeling again for a good long while. A flash, a searing comet's-tail of pain through his shoulder, and he caught the eye of one of the cattle as he fell. Book could have sworn he saw reproach in that unblinking long-lashed gaze. _Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin._ You have been judged, and found wanting.

And then he was back in Serenity, things going wrong, hearing Kaylee's anguished cry, _he ain't breathin'..._

And then he was away, far back in the long-ago darkness, hearing the sounds of orders being shouted and guns being fired, feeling his heart race as he perched high above the fray, waiting for his target to emerge. Part of him was dimly aware that this was only a memory, done and happened, and that he was really lying in Simon's infirmary; but another part was afraid that this was real, that he was dead and come back here to pay forever for what he'd done in this place. Somewhere, he thought he heard Kaylee whispering for him to come back. _...though I walk through the valley of the shadow..._

The next thing Book knew was Zoe lying to him as she tended his wounds, saying he'd be fine, they'd seen worse. When he first awoke, he thought for a moment those strong brown hands were his mother's.

And then the Alliance man, the Commander: how many had Book known like that? Never been out of the Core, anxious to show that they could hold their own out here on the frontier. It gave him some small satisfaction to see the man's face as he scanned Book's ident card.

But now he was healed, and home, and he had always been Shepherd Derrial Book, and there was nothing more to be said. Until one day not long after when he was washing the dishes after supper and felt, rather than heard, River Tam sidle up behind him. "What is it, child?" he crooned without looking up.

_"The past is not dead. It is not even past."_ Her voice sounded oddly cold and distant, and he started at it, but by the time he turned around, she was gone.


End file.
